The present disclosure relates generally to the design and implementation of a wireless control system for monitoring customer use of and providing individualized visual indications of permitted access to areas at a Family Entertainment Center (FEC). FECs are an established industry, typically housed within an indoor facility and comprising various forms of attractions for customers and marketed towards families with teenagers and young children. In a typical FEC, customers purchase credits (often in the form of tokens or tickets) in exchange for access to a specified feature, device, or attraction.
For the purpose of the following disclosure, it is useful to apportion credits into three distinct categories: quantity-based, time-based, and monetary-based. As an example, quantity-based credits may take the form of tokens or tickets, where a single such credit is exchanged for a one-time usage of an arcade or video game (or similar apparatus) within the facility. A time-based credit can be exemplified by purchasing a single ‘ticket’ or credit that grants a customer access to the facility or specific portion thereof for a defined quantity of time. One such example is the purchase of a pass to gain access to a playground or ball pit for a set amount of time. Monetary-based credits can be thought of in the more general sense as a gift card. That is, monetary-based credits denote a given amount of money or currency whose redemption is limited to the confines of the facility. As defined within this context, monetary-based credits can be exchanged for quantity-based or time-based credits.
A recent development in the nature of facilities is the advent of trampoline parks, which are considered a subset of the larger FEC industry. Within these facilities, customers purchase “jump time” or “jump tickets” to gain access to the “jump deck,” which is comprised of a plurality of trampolines in various configurations. Jump tickets are purchased in distinct time increments—that is, a single ticket grants access to the jump deck for a fixed time interval as determined at the time of purchase. In this way, jump tickets function as time-based credits as discussed previously. Typically, management of which customers are currently allowed access to the jump deck is facilitated by the use of colored wristbands or bracelets, whereby the color of the wristband denotes during which time interval a given customer is allowed access. These wristbands and/or bracelets are typically made primarily of paper or a similar disposable medium.
It is well known to those familiar with the industry that the existing paper wristband system imposes several limitations and drawbacks. Firstly, use of such a system requires that jump tickets be allotted in time increments that correspond to set time blocks across the facility. As an example, a facility may offer jump tickets in one-hour increments that begin on the hour. If a customer purchases a jump ticket any other time than at the top of the hour, they may be forced to wait until the subsequent time block. Alternatively, he or she may be given additional access beyond what was purchased (if he/she is granted access prior to their allotted time block).
Within trampoline parks and FECs more generally, certain portions of, or attractions within, the facility may require a legal waiver or another form of eligibility requirement (e.g. minimum age to participate in a go-kart course) to access. As such, many facilities permanently store customer information regarding his or her waiver status, age, and other relevant information.
Successful operation of an FEC requires accurate management of a wide variety of aspects, including selling and redeeming tickets to various attractions, maintaining and operating arcade games, redeeming tickets for prizes, and managing and monitoring customer use of all portions of the facility. The incongruous nature of all of these aspects poses a challenge in the creation of a comprehensive Point of Sale (POS) system that can manage all of these characteristics.
In a typical use case, customers purchase physical tokens that are in turn redeemable at individual devices or attractions. For FECs with arcade games, it is common to find what are called ‘redemption games,’ which dispense tickets back to the customer proportionally to the score achieved. These tickets are redeemable for prizes at a central location within the facility. This existing method poses several disadvantages. Firstly, a facility manager must constantly monitor the number of tokens available and ensure that each of the redemption machines has sufficient tickets at all times. Secondly, using paper redemption tickets creates considerable waste and incurs additional operating costs, as the tickets are redeemed and can no longer be used within the machines.
In recent years, a growing number of FECs have been moving to paperless credit management systems, Sacoa™ and Embed™ being among the popular options. In such systems, customers are typically issued a passive RFID card that acts as an intermediary device to store the number of tokens and redemption tickets a customer has purchased or earned. In this way, the RFID cards function similarly to debit cards. While this certainly has advantages over traditional paper-based ticket system, it too has its shortcomings: (1) cards can be easily lost. (2) cards can only provide information to the user when swiped at a kiosk/terminal. (3) cards don't store waiver information or other patron status information. (4) such systems do not provide any externally accessible information to FEC Staff or employees regarding the status of the customer. (5) Such systems are not inherently integrated into the POS system used to conduct transactions.
To ameliorate the shortcomings of current state-of-the-art POS systems, the present disclosure describes a comprehensive POS system to be used by FECs, which further provides the following novel and useful features and functions:
An electronic device worn by a customer that is capable of providing real-time status information regarding his or her account through the use of visual indicators embedded within the wearable device. Status information may include previously purchased tickets to attractions that are able to be redeemed, the number of earned points or prize tickets to date, or additional information such as emergency messages.
The same wearable device as above that further displays visual information to FEC Staff, allowing Staff members to easily ascertain the status of a customer from a distance.
A means of ‘gamifying’ attractions in a configurable way within the facility. That is, the system and wearable devices provide the means and methods by which customers can earn points by participating in attractions within the facility, and/or achieving certain activity metrics while participating in said attractions.
The gamification methods described above that may be further adapted to conglomerate the obtained activity information data for marketing analysis or more general data collection purposes
A means of calculating and displaying a facility ‘leaderboard,’ which displays the most active or highest achieving customers in the facility. Those customers at the top of the leaderboard are determined by a composite score, calculated as a combination or aggregation of achieved activity metrics or points earned via the gamification method(s) described herein.